24-Year-Old Charged for Using a VPN Bypassing Firewall in China Flees to South Korea

After being arrested for using a VPN to bypass China’s Great Firewall, 24-year-old Chen Yuzhen (pseudonym) was finally able to flee China. In an interview with The Epoch Times, Chen shared details of his ordeal.

In the early morning of June 10, 2020, Chen, sleeping soundly, was suddenly awakened by sharp and intense knocks on the door. Several plainclothes police officers broke into his small, shared rental apartment, and started checking all of his electronic devices. Everything was turned upside down in no time.

Chen had never expected that such a disaster would befall him.

“I asked what department they belonged to, but they refused to answer. They just kept searching everywhere, and looking for electronic devices, mobile phones, and others. They asked if we had connections to any foreign forces, whether we had joined any organizations, and so on, which we had not.”

Chen later learned that this all happened because he had used VPN (virtual private network) to bypass China’s Great Firewall, and had made some online comments about current affairs.

In an interrogation room at the Public Security Bureau of Haikou city in Hainan Province, the police reviewed all of Chen’s communication history, but found nothing. They only located records of him using VPN on his cell phone.

Bypassing the firewall is not listed as a crime in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) criminal statutes, therefore, Chen was charged with “providing tools to invade computer programs.”

Chen explained, “I looked into the definition of this crime … because many people have been charged with it.”

Chen said he had taught some friends how to bypass the Great Firewall in private. He didn’t know that using VPN would cause him any trouble. He thought China was in the era of reform and opening up, so he didn’t expect things to be so terrible. Otherwise, he would have been more careful.

“But when it happened to me, I knew it was very dangerous,” he said.

The police initially wanted to detain him. However, due to fatigue caused by the overnight interrogation, the hot weather, and emotional tension, Chen was showing a higher than normal temperature when the police tried to check him into the detention center, so the detention center refused to take him.

Therefore, Haikou City Public Security Bureau had to release him on bail pending trial and asked him to pay a bond of $1,563.

NOW WE BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND WHY CHINA CANNOT LET TAIWAN AS WE KNOW IT EXIST.... SEE REPORT BELOW:

Chen said he had formed the habit of bypassing the Great Firewall after he studied in Taiwan in 2016 as an exchange student. He saw a different world there. He was inspired and got many opportunities to think.

“When I was in Taiwan, I told people there were good things in China, or I talked about a lot of things they didn’t like, but they would not attack me. They respected different views,” Chen said.

After returning from Taiwan, Chen became a supporter of freedom and democracy, although he had been a “little pink,” a term that refers to young people who are brainwashed into believing in and supporting the CCP.

VPNs use known IPs, so they are easy to spot on the target website. For example, wikipedia will not allow editing of articles via VPN IPs.

The VPN, however, ought to protect the user from identification. I’d guess that Chinese authorities deliberately distribute VPNs that they then monitor. Can’t see this happening any other way.

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